


By the Rocket's Red Glare

by TheLightdancer



Series: Tumblr Same Prompt Party 2021 [1]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Brotp, F/F, F/M, Tumblr Prompt, short and simple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28560264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: Watching the fireworks count down to the new year, Tsukino Usagi reflects on a gift she never expected to have.
Relationships: Aino Minako & Tenoh Haruka, Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi, Kaiou Michiru/Tenoh Haruka, Kino Makoto/Mizuno Ami
Series: Tumblr Same Prompt Party 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2142699
Kudos: 5





	By the Rocket's Red Glare

It was dark, tonight, on a night where nine women and one man sat together, watching and waiting. An arc of fire shot up and with a tremendous crack! light flashed in a shower of red and green sparkles, illuminating the faces of the others. One looked around, seeing with eyes that saw more keenly than most appreciated.

At the furthest edge was a woman with short-cropped light blue hair, her hand intertwined with one tall where she was small, a woman of great height and size. By her hand the thunder sounded, and she had seen her fighting with beauty. In her eyes, as with the small blue-haired woman’s there was peace, contentment, love.

Their hands moved quietly together, as her gaze went next to the Miko that sat in a pair of shorts and suspenders, her hands folded together quietly. Her eyes were warm and welcoming, and there was peace. No hidden sorrows now. Usagi flinched as the next firework went off, in a flash of gold with small streaks of red. It reminded her of her least favorite colors and their combination and among the ten, it was a group of four to the right who all flinched in different ways. One whose hair was gold but cropped as short as Ami’s felt the warmth of tears trickling down her face, her nervous vibrations more powerful. None were unaffected, by the memories or the way the firework crackled with a terrible chuckle of grim mirth to match that which had stood before them on a red throne lit like the fires of Hell.

To her left her eyes flickered, to her Mamo-chan. She let herself smile softly. She loved him, she truly did, even if he was often weak against the nature of the Great Enemy. Once he had been harsh to her, now the inner Mamo-chan, the warm and loving man who was blessed forth at warmth with the Golden Crystal looked at the fireworks with a look of love and contentment, as his eyes met hers and he took her hand and he kissed it gently, and her smile was warm and melting.

To the right her eyes flickered, and there were her Outer Senshi. Stoic Pluto, eyes of red illuminated in the neon-blue and silver-green flashes of the next firework burst, her mask an invisible one deeply hidden. Volcanic Neptune, whose depths concealed much impenetrable to her. Of all her Senshi the most distant, for they were least alike. Neptune still thought little of her after all this time, and yet she knew of no means to heal this.

There were three others, a young teenager sitting proudly independently and yet somewhat close to a tall and gangly butch woman with hair of shining gold, her eyes still moist with tears, trembles there. The oceanic majesty of Kaioh Michiru looked at her with a quiet wariness and her hand slipped to her right shoulder.

To her left there was Mina, her beloved general, who fought so hard and sold so much of her soul to the same terrible dream that consumed her, who quietly punched the butch on the shoulder, and as she looked over, she leaned in and whispered in her ear and she couldn’t hear Haruka’s laughter or the words said over the next set of flashes, ones that erupted in flashes counting downward.

So many times she had never expected to have another, or worse she had expected to be the only one who would know it. A prisoner of the gilded cage of dead dreams of a dead empire, a songbird in a beautiful cage chirping in perpetuity. The fireworks erupted in that pattern counting down, her voice counting quietly, the words mouthed, her hand intertwining with Mamoru’s

So many times where there was fear. In the Arctic where her friends.....no, a family. Not of blood but of choice, a thing the dead Queen would not have wished but it was *hers* won in sorrow and great beauty, slept on the red snow. In the eyes of Master Pharaoh 90 when he had fallen from Heaven like a great and terrible demonic force. Before a throneroom red as Hellfire with a Golden Queen whose hair and body were armor, lost to the demented fever-dreams of the force she had sought to master and which had mastered her in turn and played her like a fiddle.

So many times she had shed others’ blood for sacrifices that had brought them here. Now here she was, the year passing, the Sun no longer Metallia’s throneroom and passing around the year.

One flash now, a superlative thing of noise and fire and thunder, and with the rest of the Senshi she shouted, with more joy (and if there was a quiet strain in that joy only she could fully perceive it, or so she hoped):

“Happy New Year!”

A thing she had never expected to have, and with those who knew most how fragile and how beautiful it was. Her smile was warm, for each of them had that most fragile of all things. Life. And for all but her, the knowledge that the eternal would not be truly so.

The shadows of Cosmos, of the tall and stoic being with her own staff so akin to Setsuna’s, grew behind her eyes. None but her saw the single tear that streaked down her face, and she was relieved when the next set of fireworks held her Senshi and her fiance’s vision spellbound as she wiped her eye clear.

It was a new year, and such moments were to be times of joy, and so it would be.

https://https://lightdancer1.tumblr.com/post/639427945492037633/by-the-rockets-red-glare://lightdancer1.tumblr.com/post/639427945492037633/by-the-rockets-red-glarehtdancer1.tumblr.com/post/639427945492037633/by-the-rockets-red-glare


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